flooding!

We've had torrential rain for the past 24 hours, and at high tide today the estuary overflowed its banks, so the park in front of us was flooded. James and I went for a walk along Buffalo Beach - very windy and wet, but warm. The roads going out of Whitianga at each side were flooded too, so right at high tide we were all trapped!

Shakespeare's Cliff

This is a walk that James and Stewart went on today, across on the pedestrian ferry, along Front Beach and up to the top of the cliffs you can see in Whitianga Harbour. Apparently fron a certain angle in Mercury Bay, the cliff has the profile of Shakespeare…? Someone had too much Coramandel Gold. Anyway, there is a beautiful isolated beach at the bottom of the cliffs with a James-sized cave.

The Broken Hills Mine

We went on a cool hike a couple of days ago to the Broken Hills, an abandoned gold mine. The hike goes up the side of a “mountain”, through the jungle, to a beautiful view point. We could see north up the Coramandel Peninsula (richly green forested hills) and east to the ocean. The the trail goes into a valley, where you go through the Collins Tunnel: a 500 m long old mine tunnel. It has a couple of bends in it, so the middle bit is completely and totally dark. And eerily quiet – if you could get all 4 boys to be quiet at the same time. There were glow worms sparkeling on the walls and ceiling – again, if you could get everyone to turn of their lights at the same time!

The last time we were there, the floor of the tunnel was rough, uneven and very wet. This time, they had a rubber mat the entire length, which made walking much easier. There are a couple of side shafts boarded up, but you could peak through the boards: shafts of pitch blackness dropping down and down and down into nothingness. There was another side tunnel that wasn’t boarded up, it just disappeared off to the left into darkness. I did pretty well through the tunnel, considering my dad was behind me: I kept expecting him to creep up to me and scare the s*!#t out of me.

The trail back to the car goes through a water race track, where the water dredged from the mines was funnelled to the river. It’s a straight track cutting deep into the hillside, almost like a tunnel with open air.

Broken Hills Mine - by Sam

The Broken Hills Mine

Q: what was the mine tunnel like?
A: fun dark wet cool cold long

Q: what do glow worms look like in the dark?
A: little green dots

Q: what do they look like in the light?
A: little green dots with slimy lines. If you tilt our head in all directions you may see it you may not.

This blog everybody in are family can read.

Recent Outings

The boys and I, along with Granny and Granddad and the cousins, visited the local petting zoo the other day. The kids all had a great time checking everything out. The place was a lot more relaxed than petting zoos in Canada.  Along with the standard goats, ponies, rabbits and sheep you could hand feed (if you’re brave enough) ostriches, emus and Texas Long Horn bulls. The kids loved the possum. Possums here are an invasive species and do quite a bit of damage to the native plants. They are frequently sighted as roadkill. Our tally is sixteen so far. I’ve been told that rather than avoid them on the road, most people aim for them. Still they are quite cute. We’ve heard one in the trees outside of our apartment at night. They make a really ugly shrieking hissing sound.

Today I took James, Sam and their cousin Rupert on the Whitianga harbour passenger ferry. We hiked up Whitianga Rock, the site of an old Maori pa (fortification). There were beautiful views of the town and surrounding area.

James hasn't grown that much - they are standing on a sloped rock

Sam & Rupert

We’ve been having fantastic weather. There’s a bit of rain in the forecast. If we get a good day later this week we might go check out Hot Water Beach – a beach that has a hot spring bubbling up in one spot. When you time it right with the tide you can dig a little hot pool for yourself in the sand.

Heather – I think you got all the right answers for James’ quiz, although I think when he did it he just eyeballed it on the map that the South Island is bigger. I agree.

                                 - Stewart

James' New Zealand Quiz

New Zealand Quiz – by James

1.   Which island is bigger?

a.     North

b.     South

c.     Both

2. Whats the national plant?
1. Kauri
2. silver fern
3. tree fern

3. Whats the national bird?
1. kiwi
2. Indigo bird
3. emu

4. Who was here first?
1. British
2. Cars
3. Māori

Otama Beach

Today we spent the day with Kate and her kids, and my mum, at Otama Beach - truly a paradise. It's a long white sand beach with rolling green pastures behind it. It has a wide lagoon in the middle which is perfect for the kids to play in. The slope at the back of the beach is made of bright orange clay, so we all had a clay body wrap (see Kate’s picture).

        

The back of the beach is shaded by pahutakawa trees, which have a big canopy of dark green leaves. They flower bright red in December, so they’re called “Christmas trees”, but we just missed that this year.

It was warm and windy today, so the surf was up. The water was lovely and warm.  I got stung by a jelly fish – I had seen some welts on a patient, but fortunately mine didn’t leave any marks. There are reports of sharks, but Kate was totally unconcerned: apparently there are always sharks around, but they rarely cause any problems. James and Lilian were in the water for 5 hours straight! After my sunburn at Kuaotunu Beach on Sunday, we all have "rash" shirts for swimming: the UV protector shirts that all Kiwi kids and all pasty white Canadians wear!

We now have Boyo for a couple of nights, and Sam is staying with Kate. It will be a pleasant break from their fairly constant bickering. Although I am impressed with them sharing a room - they usually chat and play for a little while before going to sleep.

Work has been excellent. I got to relocate a shoulder in the clinic yesterday, do my own IV antibiotics the other night, and then I had to go to the local police station to see a patient in custody. All very exciting!

The Maori Creation Myth - by James

The Maori Creation Myth

-As told by James

Te kore (the nothingness) had two children: Rangi-nui (The Sky) and Papa-tū-ā -nuku (The Earth).

As Rangi-nui looked down at Papa-tū-ā-nuku with loving eyes he moved closer. When they embraced they had many children. The children decided to separate them. Except Tāwhiri (the storm god) who vowed he would rage war on whoever separated his parents.

The first to try was Rongo (the food god) with no success. Then Tū (the war god) tried with no luck either. Then Tāne (the forest god) tried. He turned into a Kauri tree separating Earth from the Sky. Tāwhiri soden with failure launched himself into the heavens. 

First week

I can't believe we've only been here a week. It feels like longer, it's been such a full week.

Work has started in earnest. The clinic has been going really well. The staff are lovely. They have 2 or 3 doctors and 2-3 nurses on at once. The computerized medical record has been a challenge to learn, but the hardest thing by far is the drugs: not only do they all have different names, but the government funds totally different ones. I'm going to get to know the pharmacists very well!

Last night was my first night on call. All the calls go through a nursing triage phone centre in Aukland, then they'll call me if needed. If I need to see a patient, I can arrange to see them at the clinic. Fortunately for me, it's about a 2 minute walk from our place. If they're too sick for me to deal with, I can get them to call an ambulance to take them to the hospital in Thames, but it's about an hour and a half away. I have to do lots of things myself which I'm not used to doing (IVs, giving medications etc) which at home the ER nurses would do. On the other hand, I can't do a lot of the things I'm used to doing - we have no labs or xrays or hospital bed. I did a bit of suturing in the evening, then no calls after that. I'm sure that call karma won't last long!

The weather is specatular. We had a couple of days of clouds/misty rain/sunshine, but still very warm. Today it's back to hot and sunny and breezy. Kate and Phil are back so we've been spending time with all the cousins together - they've had no problems settling in with each other again. Last night we went to an early Burns Supper - Jacquie and Richard, you would have loved it! We had haggis piped in by Phil, an abridged Ode to Robbie Burns, whisky, and then a toast to the Laddies and Lassies after pudding. The hosts are from Glasgow, the husband is another locum in my clinic. They tried to teach us some dancing afterwards - even Stewart got out there doing a reel! (he says he didn't get enough whisky first!). They have four boys (!!!) so James and Sam have made some friends.

We'll post more pictures soon!

Andrea

More Photos

Here are a few more photos:

Sam playing on the beach

The boys' room

Our apartment. It's pretty sweet!

View from our deck

Apartment

Apartment

Sam, checking out the old gold mine at Waitaia

James at the mine

Inside the mine - looks like Gollum's home! We couldn't explore very far.

The Silver Fern - by James

THE SILVER FERN

Do you know how to identify a silver fern?

( by the way the silver fern is the national plant of New Zealand.)

They look just like tree ferns.until you look under the leef otherwise

there the exact same.If the under side of the leef is silver it’s a silver fern

if it’s green it’s a tree fern.

- James

Photos

Here's a couple of photos. The upload is quite slow and we have a few computer bugs to workout. We'll try to post more soon.

1st day of home schooling

James Boogie Boarding

Kuotunu Beach (near Andrea's sister house)

Happy New Year!

Hello everyone!

What a great way to spend New Years! It seems so strange to be in the summer heat, and long nights, and to be celebrating New Years, and seeing Christmas decorations still up. We arrived 2 days ago in Whitianga, and it feels like right into the heart of summer.

We're having some problems with our computer - we can't send emails directly, and our camera isn't downloading photos - so for now you'll just have to imagine how lovely it is here.

Sam started our trip with a delightful tantrum through customs and immigration. Stewart had to hold onto him to stop him running away, and he was screaming the whole time. Maybe that’s why we got through so quickly! James couldn’t be left out, so the next day he let one fly, too. Then they had some rough moments deciding who can go into which areas of the bedroom they have to share. If we had a measuring tape, they would have used it to make sure the other one didn’t have a fraction of a centimeter more space. However, it’s hard to stay unhappy in this sunshine for long, and they’re having so much fun in the water.

Our apartment is fantastic. It's on the third floor overlooking a park full of big bushy trees, and onto the marina on the estuary, with hills across the estuary. Downstairs is the pool and hot tub, and 5 minutes down the road is the beach. It's a bit of a pain, really, deciding what beach to go to: there are 4 or 5 stunning long white sandy beaches to choose from. Today we went to visit my Mum and Dad in Kuaotunu (the tiny town where my sister Kate lives). They are staying in a very rustic converted barn on Kate and Phil’s property. It has the nicest outhouse I have ever seen: no door, open to the panoramic view of  Kuaotunu beach. Kate and Phil aren’t home from their sailing trip yet, so we have yet to see all the cousins.

Whitianga is insanely busy right now. It’s a summer beach town, so it will be busy until school goes back in eary February, but it’s particularly busy right now for New Year’s. There was a huge outdoor festival/concert with something like 15,000 people. James and I went for a run on New Years Day at 6:30 am (yes, we were up – it was 9:30 for us!) and saw people sleeping in their cars, on the beach, in tents along the side of the road…some were still up, some were sitting still holding their heads in their hands cursing the sunlight… Apparently there were lots of parties going on around us, even fireworks, but nothing disturbed us. We were all asleep by 9pm!

Real life starts tomorrow. I start work at the clinic, which is just a block away from home. Stewart’s going to start home schooling, starting of course with the morning swim in the pool. The afternoon’s field trip? Maybe a walk to the beach to study waves? Gym class will be devoted to boogy boarding. It’s going to be rough.